Your House is a Money Pit/10 Common Mistakes.......

As with most products, with paint, you really get what you pay for. In fact, the components in paint that give it longevity and durability are costly. So it is in the best interest of your historic home to use high quality paint.

When working with a professional painter, remember that they usually receive trade discounts and for this reason, are often reluctant to use a different brand. However, the actual cost of paint is a small portion of the cost of hiring a professional painter.

It is important to do research and choose the best paint within your budget. If need be, find out how much paint your painter will need and purchase the paint yourself.

Replies to This Discussion

Paint it yourself with Behr paints from Home Depot. We usually get test strips from Ben Moore or Village Paints to choose our color, then take it to HD and have Behr custom mixed. In my experience it is far better than Ben Moore, Sherwin Williams and several other top brands.

As a contractor I did that once. I bid a paint job and my customer excepted the bid with the stipulation she would supply the paint. I use Diamond Vogel paint and I have never been disappointed. I didn't see any harm in using her paint so I accepted her terms. I was painting a light tan over walls that were white. She came in with Glidden for me to use. OMG three coats later you could still see the white walls, Cut in was totally different from the rolled surfaces. The sheen was eggshell in places and semi-gloss in others. This isn't even mentioning the runs and splatter from the roller. It was a mess. She was so upset because we were using so much paint and taking so long. I told her it was the paint she had me using but she informed me "paint is paint". The last day I stopped and bought my usual paint and poured into her cans. We finished the room in one coat with no mess or problems. She told me she was glad I finally figured out how to paint a room. I would never use a customers paint unless we agree upon the brand before hand. Lair

I should mention this was many years ago and I have not used Glidden since so I have no way of knowing what their paint quality is today.

Glidden, Dutch Boy and others still have the name, but have been formulated to meet a lower price point for the big box stores. Quality has definetely suffered. I know that Behr and others always test well in Consumer Reprots, but in the real world they fail quite often. Especially the primer+paint combos. They are not a great primer and not a great topcoat.

I've had good luck with most brands, but prefer Sherwin Williams mainly because I've used it so often that it is predictable and I adore their Preservation Palette of historic colors. I recently used their texture paint to skim coat some cracked plaster walls in my 1940 Tudor and I highly recommend it. Quite pricey but not too bad if you wait for the frequent 40% off sale! Worth every penny if you are trying to re-create a hand-troweled finish with a minimum of effort.